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Sexual Harassment and Assaultby Emma Piar-Shaw and Emma Duncan

We were immediately drawn to the idea of producing a story about sexual harassment and assault because we wanted to challenge ourselves as reporters. Also, we both felt this would be prevalent because of the current state of the #MeToo movement.

For the interviews, we knew we wanted to have someone tell their story about their experiences with these issues. Finding someone who was brave enough to share their story with us was not an easy task, but doing so made this story have a deeper impact.

We also wanted to have a counselor talk about how individuals can help those who have experienced sexual violence and how it impacts the victims. We interviewed our friend's mom because she has her own counseling practice in St. Louis.

When we first started slating and logging our footage, we had to pick and choose what we thought would be appropriate to use from the anonymous victim's interview. We found some powerful soundbites to use that added a lot more depth to the story. When we were slating and logging the interview for the counselor, we ended up liking a lot of what she had to say. Between those interviews, we knew that we had enough from each interview to start writing the script.

The script was very easy to put together. We chose a couple of the sound bites that we really liked from the anonymous interview and chose the strongest sound bites from the counselor interview since there were so many to choose from. Then we made sure our voice work helped bridge those soundbites together.

When it came to b-roll, we did struggle to find some to fit the more graphic sound bites, so we asked MT for assistance. MT was able to find great royalty-free b-roll that fit perfectly into our story. We also ended up getting b-roll from the counselor’s office and people talking and listening to each other as if they were in a counseling setting.

We're really happy with how the story turned out. We hope that it sheds some light on how acts of sexual harassment and assault impacts victims. Also, we sincerely hope it shows people how they can help victims feel more at ease.